MAY 14, 2024 GRACE EBERT
“La veillée au candélou” (2020), wax, steel, and wicks, 200 x 200 x 225 centimeters, installation view at Palais des Beaux-Arts de Paris. All images courtesy of Juliette Minchin,
French artist Juliette Minchin appreciates wax for its ambivalence and the ways it can be smooth or crinkled or firm or pliable.
French artist Juliette Minchin appreciates wax for its ambivalence. Activated by heat, the modest material can be smooth or crinkled, firm or pliable, and molded into a distinct shape or pooled into a puddle of liquid. No matter its current form, though, wax can quickly morph from one state to another, and this impermanence is partially what inspired Minchin to incorporate the sticky compound into her practice about five years ago.
Today, the artist creates large-scale installations and sculptures often embedded with candles. “The cross, vigil with thorns,” for example” arranges 33 wax-dipped panels in an enormous T-shape centered in a stark 13th-century Cistercian abbey. Each day, 363 wicks burned and melted away the dried substance to slowly reveal a botanical motif in steel.
Alternatively, architectural works like “Vitrail soufflé” are static for longer periods. The stained-glass window rendition features sheer, curtain-like panels bulging and falling around an arched metal frame based on the original construction. Appearing caught in the wind, the billowing sheets are made by pouring liquid wax on flat surfaces to create a thin layer, which Minchin peels off while warm. “I place them on the metal structures, and I have about two minutes to sculpt them. It’s a dialogue between what the material offers me and where I want to take it. I have to let myself be guided by the accident and instantaneity,” she tells Colossal. […]
“Vitrail soufflé” for ‘RIVELAZION’ at Museo Sant’Orsola Florence
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